Sistani has abstained from personally delivering public addresses and shunned media contacts. As a result, quotations pertaining to him are from secondary sources which were made available through interlocutors, aides, and so forth.

Sistani's office refuses the replacement of the law [which excludes former Baath Party members from returning to public life] because it is not an Iraqi demand but it is a political demand to please some sides.

The council that will write the constitution should be elected, not hand-picked ... The constitution will be illegal if it is written by a council, whether that is chosen by the Americans or by what is called the Governing Council or by anyone else.

I was sleeping in a village near Basra that night ... I saw the villagers grabbing their guns and preparing to rush to Najaf, hundreds of miles away. 'Sistani is under attack,' they told me. That was all they needed to know. The same thing happened all over Iraq.